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ICC Champions Trophy 2025 Final Preview: India v New Zealand - Win Prediction and Top Pick Forecasts from Experts – March 9

By Cricket World Staff

Saturday 8 March 2025

ICC Champions Trophy

Final, Dubai

India won by 4 wickets

India254/6

New Zealand251/7

Scorecard

Stats

Check out the latest win prediction and best picks from experts, for the ICC Champions Trophy Final between India vs New Zealand, to be played on Sunday, March 9 2025……

Win Prediction

India (1.44) vs New Zealand (3.25)

Venue

Dubai International Cricket Stadium

Probable XIs

India: Sharma, Gill, Kohli, Iyer, Rahul, Patel, Pandya, Jadeja, Shami, Yadav, Chakravarthy

New Zealand: Young, Ravindra, Williamson, Mitchell, Latham, Phillips, Bracewell, Santner, Henry, Jamieson, O’Rourke

Pitch Report

There’s been an awful lot of cricket at the Dubai International Cricket stadium recently, with 15 IL20 matches played there in Jan/Feb before the four India ODIs in this tournament. We aren’t expecting a fresh pitch (like in the semi-final) and both sides will probably want to bat first. Scores batting first here so far this competition- 264, 249, 241, 228. Expect India to go with 4 spinners again.

Seasoned Performers

Everyone knows how good Virat Kohli is. Miraculously, it looks like a couple of bookmarkers are actually under-rating him for this Final, presumably based on the pitch numbers. The Player Performance Points market has caught our eye- remember you get 1 point per run, 10 for a catch and 20 for a wicket (‘keepers also get 25 points per stumping).

Kohli fields in high traffic areas as he always wants to be in the action and he has a really safe pair of hands. He has a whopping 7 catches in the 4 games so far to go with his 217 runs.

Kohli’s performance points scores so far this competition? 42, 120, 21, 104.

Kohli might be the biggest “big game player” of them all

In World Cups he averages 59.83 with 48.5 runs per innings (37 inns). In the Champions Trophy he averages 82.88 (46.6 RPI, 16 inns). This tournament his two failures with the bat came against Bangladesh and in the dead rubber against New Zealand. Against Pakistan Kohli got an unbeaten ton in the chase and in the Semi Final against Australia he top-scored again. When he’s up for it, he rarely fails.

His performance line? 36.5 (Bet365). Seems crazy low, we’re on overs.

Shreyas Iyer under-rated

Shreyas Iyer is also under-rated in this market, his line is 28.5 (Bet365), and we’ve backed overs again. In ODIs this year Iyers performance points scores are 55, 79, 56, 25, 88, 44 and 59. He’s scored 195 runs in this tournament and has taken a couple of catches.

Bank on Axar

Axar Patel is an extremely important member of this India side as he gives them so much balance and is a real three-dimensional cricketer. He’s actually been used at number 5 a lot recently (3 times out of 4 this comp) and a lot of bookies are still pricing his runline as if he’s a 6 or a 7. Over 16.5 runs for Axar is an excellent bet- he scored 27 in the semi and- again at number 5- came in with India in trouble at 30/3 in the previous game against New Zealand before steadying the ship with a gutsy 42.

Player of the Match

The most likely winner of the Player of the Match award is Virat Kohli, and there’s nothing at all wrong with backing him at 8/1 (general) to land the spoils considering his big game record.

One who might be flying under the radar a bit though is Mitchell Santner, who bowled brilliantly in the Semi against NZ during his spell of 3/43. The ball to get van der Dussen, cleaned up when set on 69 and looking ominous, was the ball of the tournament. That was his second 3-fer in four games in CT25 and considering he can bat too- he got 28 against India last time- 22/1 Santner Player of the Match (Paddy Power) looks too big